“Beirut, how can I start describing it? It is the most unstable place I ever lived at but maybe also the most friendly and open minded one. It is a city which hangs in an awkward balance where utter destruction and wild and uncontrolled reconstruction sit right next to each other. It is loud, it is colorful, it is fun and scary at the same time. I do not know how it works, why it works; but it does. Every morning a new day starts and contrary to my European mindset it is not clear whether the next day will be the same. Even more so, most people do not seem to mind it. When in Beirut, you live in the present. The past is past and what is physically left of it is being torn down and reconstructed in the form of huge office buildings. The future is unclear, so don’t worry about. All you have is now. How can one feel more alive than in Beirut?”

Stefan Roch is a photographer, blogger and PhD student at the Department of Public Policy at CEU. He has been active in photography since he left the high school. For the first 8 years he was exclusively shooting b/w film, developing it in the basement of his parent's house. Due to time-restraints he switched to digital 2 years ago but due to experience and a certain mode of perception he keeps on developing his pictures in black and white, mimicking in a way the look he had created by shooting with British film, developed in German developer and enlarged on Czech photo paper. He shoots in a documentary style, using mainly short focal lengths, getting as close to the subject matter as possible. Over the past year he have developed a photo blog which he maintains as a weekly exercise: http://stefan-roch.tumblr.com/